federal salaries, difficult tut military paychecks, medicare, medicaid bills, defense vendors need to be paid. unemployment checks need to get cut. food stamp debit cards need to be refilled. deficit piles up into national debt. i'm joined by senior political columnist of the daily beast and mayaguinness. maya, should the debt ceiling be the place to argue about spending cuts? >> in the past, the debt controlling has been used responsibly, to help us push for making changes to the budget when we're on an unsustainable course. can you kind of think of it as a speed bump. we would hit the debt ceiling, be reminded we're borrowing too much. they would fight about raising it and then they would raise it. what happened last time, i think, was throwing cold water on to the system of how close we got to truly defaulting and the fact that that will lead to economic problems in the country and around the world. >> republicans almost gleeful that the debt ceiling will give them leverage to extract spending cuts. is this good policy or is it revenge? is it a speed bump, or is this somehow -- is